Divers are essentially tourists who love coral reefs and invest a lot of time and effort to watch them.
Divers are essentially tourists who love coral reefs and invest a lot of time and effort to watch them. Unfortunately, divers also cause damage to corals, often unintentionally, through disturbing and resuspending sand, touching them, hitting them with their equipment, and scaring fish away. Artificial reefs have been proposed as a means of diverting diving pressure from the natural reef to alternative sites, thus preserving both dive tourism and the coral reef.
The problem was noticed years ago in Eilat, and, as a result, in cooperation with the Nature and Parks Authority, Prof. Nadav Shashar of Ben-Gurion University's Marine Biology and Biotechnology Program and the OBS company, an artificial reef was established there on the border of the nature reserve enclosing the natural coral reefs. The artificial reef was established in 2006 and, in 2007, corals, which were grown in a special coral nursery, were planted on it. Since then, it has attracted many species of reef fish and other invertebrates that are difficult to find on the natural reef.
Read more at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Image: Diving the artificial reef (Photo Credit: Dr. Jenny Tynyakov)
